Michael Froomkin links to Chris Brunner telling people to stop running bit torrent over tor. Brunner writes that Tor torrentors enjoy “hiding behind it to steal software,” and I stopped reading at the word “steal.” I assume he said something about the network not having capacity for all the bit torrent traffic that flows across it.
I’ve used Tor. It’s a very slow way to read the web, partially because there aren’t enough nodes to carry all the traffic. A common response to this problem is to encourage people to run relays.
I always think, though, that running a relay is like building more lanes on a road. Traffic just increases until it’s too slow for common use. The people that most need anonymity are willing to use Tor even when it’s slow. If we add more capacity, then more people who have greater need for anonymity (and thus greater tolerance for slowness) than me will start using it too. And thus every capacity increase is eaten by new users and the network never gets fast enough for me to use.
There are other good reasons to run a relay (better anonymity, for one), but I’m skeptical that faster Tor service is one of them. Next time I run into Wendy Seltzer, I’ll have to ask her about this.
Hello James,
I wrote that post back in 2006. My ideas regarding intellectual “property” have changed a great deal since then.
You’re probably right the economics of Tor being such that increases in capacity will ultimately just bring more users.
While Tor isn’t fast enough for my daily browsing, I find that it is an incredibly useful tool for specialized projects, and I think it’s worth trying to preserve as much capacity as possible, even if that doesn’t make it fast enough for me to use. It helps someone, somewhere.